Season 2 Redo: CICBTOFMB
by Gidget1984
Summary: I was dissapointed with Season 2 of VM. She delt with nothing and it looks as though the writers are going to gloss over everything again. I am making my own season 2 as soon as I get the DVDs. SEE Profile for my mini rant. Begins Summer b4 2nd Season.


**Title: **Season Two Redo: Cause I Can't Bleach The Original From My Brain

**Chapter Title**: How It Is and How It Was

**Rating:** M (I never know what Delia will think of next.)

**Disclaimer:** No, I do not own Veronica Mars. If I did Jason "adorable" Dohring would be in nothing but a towel for the rest of the series. Let's all take a moment to thank his mama for giving birth to that delectable specimen of man meat. (clapping from audience).

**Summary:** My own Version of Season 2. The first two chapters deal with the summer following being flame broiled in a refrigerator. Veronica's not dealing too well. Ths is a LoVe story. Cause really, who wants to catch a VD?

**A/N:** Ok, so I started this a year ago. Never finished and I am oh, so sorry to the people who read and reviewed before. You showed me a lot of support. I know you have been waiting a long time for this. A year and three months to be precise...damn, that's a long time. Delia (my muse) and I are back on speaking terms. We had many heated negotiations involving chocolate-chip cookie dough ice-cream and Brad Pitt movies. (we take our talks very serious.) I have changed some things. My disappointment in the 2nd season led me into a different direction with this story. Read my mini rant in my profile and you'll see why. (My rant is a little foul mouthed. May not be suitable for children under 14.)

* * *

Lilly lived beautiful to the tips of her fingers. Veronica never understood how someone could end her, end that beauty.

How is there an ending to something that had no definite beginning? Sure there was a day designated for the celebration of Lilly's birth, but when Veronica sat back and really thought about it, Lilly's soul, her spirit, had to be on this planet since the start of forever. There was something in her deep green eyes that gave her away. So all-knowing to be so young, so cynical and bitter. Lilly had her midlife crisis when she was 5 and again when she was 13. And her life was basically a fairytale compared to everyone's after she was long gone.

But not everything about Lilly was bright and encompassing, beautiful and straightforward… She was cold-hearted, manipulative at times. Stubborn. Egotistical. Controlling. Selfish. Callous. Unforgiving. Secretive. Veronica didn't learn that lesson until much later.

Logan was wrong when he said Lilly loved guys. Lilly loved attention. She craved it. And she got it. She will forever be known as the young blonde heiress, murdered in cold blood beside her parents' glistening pool. Her privileged and overindulged life cut short. A life full of torrid affairs with boyfriends' fathers and kids from the wrong side of the tracks and damning secrets.

Lilly left her best friend behind stumbling in the dark. Straining for a foothold on the edge of a sharp cliff. Jagged rocks littering the bottom waiting for her fall. Veronica Mars never saw it coming.

* * *

Veronica was all butterfly kisses and sunshine smiles. She was pigtails, pastel colors, and ballet slippers. She smelled like naivety and cotton candy. Innocence was written on her elfish face and reflected in her large blue eyes. Sweetness dripped from her lips when she spoke and thick sticky honey flowed in on the waves of her giggles. She was a brilliant star and everyone flocked to her like moths to flames. Her hair was a gold satin waterfall that cascaded over shoulders and framed faces; catching the sunlight and making her radiate this saintly glow. Her skin was smooth silk, her smile bright, secret lights dancing in her eyes. Veronica was an angel. Mommy's pride and joy. Daddy's little girl.

But that was before. Before Duncan neglecting her, before Lilly's murder, before supposed friends turned their back on her, before her mother's abandonment, before being drugged and "raped" at a party, before finding out about her mother's infidelity, before not knowing who her biological father was, before kissing and than dating briefly her greatest adversary, before finding out she slept with someone who could have been her brother, before discovering Lilly's true killer and being locked in a refrigerator and set on fire.

Now, Veronica was shades of gray and black, dark reds and maroon. The colors that are permanently tattooed on her mind after bearing witness to Lilly's broken, bloody body. She smelled like the tangy copper of blood and the intensity of her anger. Her smile was sour, her face harsh. The eyes that reflected all her emotions were hard, cold and detached. Her skin was no longer soft silk, but twisted metal, rusty and dented. The golden cloud of her hair was gone… Chopped off in front of a bathroom mirror two days after THE PARTY (all capital letters). She told her father she needed a change after...Lilly. (When really, it was to rid her of the smell of stale beer and sex, of sweat and his cologne. Honestly, it didn't work. When she closed her eyes at night and if she forgot to block it out, the smells tainted her skin. If she could chop that off in front of a bathroom mirror she would.)

Over a year later, she's standing in front of a mirror again, all pasty skin and sad eyes staring back at her. And this is her breakdown. This is her defeat. Wallace, who thinks she doesn't know, is standing outside the door. His ear pressed against the wood, after being given explicit instructions from her doctor. Suicide watch.

Her father pulled her out of a burning refrigerator almost two days ago. Everyone is afraid she's going to snap. Veronica feels a tugging at her lips, and in the mirror, the girl's mouth curls into a sardonic smile.

Veronica Mars has already snapped and shattered. She's a brilliant little actress.

* * *

"_I'm going to be Donald Trump's young and gorgeous pill-popping mistress. Full of botox injections and silicon boobs, drinking apple martinis and watching old _Sex and the City_ reruns." Lilly announced as she and Veronica walked along the beach one afternoon._

"_Hmm." Veronica nodded in agreement. "And who will I be Ms. Kane?"_

"_Definitely a soccer mom. 3 kids, and a dog named Simba, and a gray mini van. Yup, that's you." She shrugged off Veronica's look of disbelief. "But if, in the off chance, you should marry Duncan, you'll be a politician's wife. 3 kids, a dog named Democracy, and a Mercedes SUV, cause of course you have to drive your girls to cheerleading practice and your son to baseball."_

_Veronica frowned. "Well that's boring. Are you sure I can't be Duncan's pill-popping mistress?"_

"_Sorry, Mars. Duncan would die before he let you become as free spirited as I."_

"_Free spirited? I thought you were just a whore."_

"_And the zingers keep on coming. I have taught you well, grasshopper. Maybe there is hope for you yet in the Secret Society of Pill-Popping Martini-Drinking Mistresses."_

* * *

Hopped up on pills and eerily calm. Anxiety. Depression. Veronica now has phobias pouring out her eyeballs. She's scared of fire, closed-in spaces, ghosts named Lilly, and twenty-million-dollars-a-movie actors. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

_Veronica didn't grieve properly. She has not come to terms with Lilly Kane's death, though it's been a year and half. _

It's been more than a week and Veronica still wakes up sweating trying to put out invisible flames on her legs, her cries dead in her throat. Wallace has taken to sleeping on her bedroom floor or in the living room. On the nights he can't come over she doesn't sleep. She stays up all night, curled into a ball on the couch. Eyes wide and staring at the TV. It's not turned on.

_Veronica has textbook Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has hysterical panic attacks. She's told me, that in the last couple of days she can't close the bathroom door when she takes a shower. Claustrophobia. She is clinically depressed. If I didn't think it would be better for her to be in her own home I would be admitting her to the hospital. _

_I don't think it's just this one thing, as horrifying as it was. I think Veronica played the part of dealing with things well, and now it has caught up with her and she's floundering._

_I'm going to prescribe some antidepressants, maybe some sleeping pills. And we'll see how that goes before further deciding her treatment._

Veronica didn't care. She didn't see the bulbs flashing in her face every time she stepped outside. Didn't see her face and name, along with Aaron Echolls, and Lilly Kane plastered on magazines in the grocery store. She was the front-page story of newspapers. The jokes made by Jay Leno. The skits on Saturday Night Live. The brave little blonde that dared to defy her rich little town and the rest of the world.

Then, there were camera crews and reporters standing outside her apartment waiting for a glimpse of her through the windows. On CNN, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Oprah she was known as a hero. That was 85 of the United States.

To everyone else, she was the whore that was using the Echolls name to get her face in the papers. Maybe she learned that some of Aaron's tapes starred her, so she made up this elaborate story of teen princesses with smashed heads and psychos in back seats. She got hate mail that Wallace slid into his jacket pocket every morning before she could see it. He disposed of it properly after one of those nosy reporters dug it out of the trash and read over the 10 o'clock news. Veronica didn't watch it.

* * *

"_Do you ever think about your future?" Veronica asked as she and Lilly floated side by side in the Echolls swimming pool. Logan and Duncan were in the kitchen with Mrs. Nevarro getting snacks._

"_Veronica, darling," Lilly began tilting her head back to get more sun, "I'm rich…I can have any future I want. Why think about it?"_

"_So you don't want to go to college?"_

"_Of course I'm going to college. I have to be there for the clothing optional fraternity parties." Lilly said coyly. "Besides, I can't leave virginal Veronica Mars, alone with all the hot, sweaty, toga wearing college guys, can I? You wouldn't know what to do."_

"_Funny." Veronica said dryly, bringing her glass of lemonade to her lips. "When you get knocked up and written out of Daddy Kane's will, you can always be a comedienne."_

"_Meow! Kitten has claws." She laughed._

"_Here Lilly, got you an apple." Logan said as he and Duncan came closer to the pool._

"_An apple? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"_

"_I know you're a blonde…but you eat it." Logan said in a 'duh' tone._

"_Hey," Veronica said offended. "I'm a blonde, too."_

"_That's kinda obvious Skipper." Logan snarked, sitting by the edge of the pool with Duncan. "DK got you some fruit, too. I noticed you two have gotten a little…pudgy around the waist line."_

"_Did he just say what I think he said?" Veronica's eyes were wide as she turned to look at Lilly._

"_You are so getting cut off, Logan." Lilly said._

"_From sex?" Logan whined. "It was just a joke. Ha Ha. Funny. I'm only thinking of your health. Right, DK?" _

"_Right. He just wants you to be healthy. Like me." Duncan covered, his eyes just as wide as Veronica's. Logan's mouth was always getting him in trouble. "You know what they say 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away.'"_

"'_But if he's cute lose the fruit.'" Veronica finished, earning looks from her friends. "What? That's what my mother says."_

* * *

"Mmm," Wallace said waving an apple in front of Veronica's face. "A shiny, red apple. Bet it's juicy." He said in his most persuasive voice.

Veronica stared blankly ahead and in Wallace's keen bestest-friend observation she hadn't blinked in 10 minutes. That had to be a world record.

"So, this is some nice, quality B.F.F bonding time." Wallace glanced around the Mars living room as if waiting for some one to pop out with a tape recorder. "If you ever let it slip that I used the term B.F.F in reference to us…we are so beyond over."

Veronica was quiet.

"So, I was thinking," he waited a beat for one of her smart comments. None came. "That's were you're supposed to say 'oh, a new frontier' or 'wow, I thought I smelled smoke' and, my personal favorite 'don't pull a muscle.' But seeing as I'm not going to get that…" He trailed off. "Anyway, I was thinking if Backup was Scooby Doo, who would I be? I'm thinking I would be Shaggy cause Fred wears an ascot and I'm too cool for an ascot."

A smile tugged at Veronica's lips.

"Wait a minute…did I just get a genuine reaction from Zombie #3 Ms. Mars?" He stood up only to comically stumble back in shock. " I think-" He said dramatically hands clasped to his chest as he gasped. "I think my heart skipped a beat."

Veronica rolled her eyes.

"Wait," He gasped again. "Did you just blink? Oh, my whole left side has gone numb! The shock. The agony. The horror. I'll save a spot for you in hell, Veronica Mars." He gasped again and fell to the floor.

Veronica's smile widened to an all out grin.

* * *

"_Veronica, darling," Lilly said, her face set in a gravely serious expression, even as her eyes danced with amusement. "The first thing you learn when you are as fabulous as me is nerds need love, too." She slid her sunglasses back on her face in a completely graceful Hollywood glamour move._

"_Oh," Veronica nodded, equally as serious. "See, I never got that memo."_

"_Well, now you know." Lilly said primly as she stood from the lunch table. "As I said before, I must go visit the chess club's lunch table. I bid you adieu." She pursed her full cherry glossy lips and blew Veronica an air kiss before turning and making her way across the quad._

_Logan would laugh and give her a salute before turning back to his conversation about waves and surfing. Duncan would roll his eyes and mumble something under his breath and finish eating his pizza. But Veronica…Veronica would be watching Lilly in_

_awe._

* * *

"Wow, look how fabulous I look dodging my very own paparazzi." Veronica flicked off the TV in disgust. "Why won't they leave me alone?" She whined flopping back on Wallace's bed and covering her face with his pillow.

"You solved a high profile case, that they foolishly believed was solved a year ago. You're like a real live Nancy Drew-"

"I'm cuter," Her voice muffled from the pillow.

"-Only cuter." He finished. "You're not gonna have a normal summer, Veronica. Therefore, I won't have a normal summer. I'm gonna forever be known as the super-fine black guy that's always seen with Veronica Mars." He gave her a cheesy grin when she lifted the pillow just to give him a mock glare.

"Super-fine?" She shook her head and sat up. "If I knew this slumber party would be a kick back to the 70s, I would have worn my daisy dukes and platform shoes."

Wallace shuddered. "You ruined another of my fantasies."

"And what would this be?"

"Hot blonde, sleeping over, wearing nothing but those short shorts."

"Hello!" She jumped off the bed and turned to him as he sat back in his desk chair. "I'm a hot blonde, I'm sleeping over, and you can keep dreaming about those short shorts."

"Eww. Veronica, hate to burst your Playboy bunny bubble, but you're kind of my pseudo-sister/best friend. And thinking of you, as adorable as you are, like that makes me sick to my stomach."

"Good to know." Veronica smirked. "That's exactly how I feel about you." She made her to his bedroom door and stopped right before crossing the threshold. "I had to feel comfortable sleeping over here and now I am, knowing you don't have naked wet dreams about me." She gave him a grin and winked and flounced out the room. His gagging and coughing echoing down the hall.


End file.
